Your Honest opinion on Kemper as a live rig

    Quote from SQUAREHEAD

    I’ve done it all, merged, direct, my own direct profiles, Guido Bogner profiles, Berts Friedman profile pack, Which are great for live use without a cabinet, but nothing captures the real amplifier tone and feel, nothing…
    If you find top Jimi’s (Merged) profiles sound good through guitar cabinets, then we are on a completely different wavelength… I guess we all have different ears, tone is subjective…
    Sorry, They sound and feel nothing like a real tube guitar amplifier through a 4×12 cabinet…
    Hope you’re having a great weekend bro!

    Exactly! Especially Top Jimi studio profiles are great through monitors but the merged ones are the worst I've tried with a real cab...


    Btw still laughing with your post about electric shock treatment... :D

    Quote from SQUAREHEAD

    I’ve done it all, merged, direct, my own direct profiles, Guido Bogner profiles, Berts Friedman profile pack, Which are great for live use without a cabinet, but nothing captures the real amplifier tone and feel, nothing…
    If you find top Jimi’s (Merged) profiles sound good through guitar cabinets, then we are on a completely different wavelength… I guess we all have different ears, tone is subjective…
    Sorry, They sound and feel nothing like a real tube guitar amplifier through a 4×12 cabinet…
    Hope you’re having a great weekend bro!

    what kind of cabinet do you use? What kind of speakers? Are you using a seperate power amp or the powered Kemper? What tones are you chasing?


    I have played live JCM800s, 900s, bassmans, etc. I had a chance to A/B the Kemper when I got it with the 800 and a silver jub. We blind tested in the studio standing in the room with the amp and had someone switch the input back and forth. After about 2 min people would lose track of what they were playing through and wouldn’t be able to tell anymore. I’m not saying someone couldn’t discerne, but I have seen some really experienced engineers and musicians get lost during the comparison.


    If you are ever in the LA area I would love to get together and do some testing.

    Quote from Sunshine

    what kind of cabinet do you use? What kind of speakers? Are you using a seperate power amp or the powered Kemper? What tones are you chasing?
    I have played live JCM800s, 900s, bassmans, etc. I had a chance to A/B the Kemper when I got it with the 800 and a silver jub. We blind tested in the studio standing in the room with the amp and had someone switch the input back and forth. After about 2 min people would lose track of what they were playing through and wouldn’t be able to tell anymore. I’m not saying someone couldn’t discerne, but I have seen some really experienced engineers and musicians get lost during the comparison.


    If you are ever in the LA area I would love to get together and do some testing.

    the fact that the Profiler - as a preamp or driving a guitar cabinet - works so well for so many people proves that it is quite capable of delivering authentic tube amp sound.
    If some users experience difficulties obtaining the results they are after, this does not mean that the Profiler paradigm isn't working as adverised - it only means something keeps you from achieving just this.
    maybe the comparison isn't being made at similar/equal volume levels,
    or the comparison itself is flawed (comparing an amp to a Profile taken from another amp, even though they are the same model).
    If you take a Direct Amp Profile properly and then play this Profile over the same cabinet at comparable levels, it will sound the same as the tube head with the same settings from which this Profile was taken.

    To the thread starter (I'm not sure if he's still around), have a look in the link in my signature and watch videos and gear setup links to hundreds of bands using kempers live (and on albums). Some replace all their amp gear with Kemper, some just parts of it, and some keep everything.
    It's a matter of personal choice, economical and emotional factors. Some want to keep their expensive, fragile, heavy amps at home, and have a copy of it playing live in a low weight unit.
    Other reasons some don't want to get rid of all amp gear is the deep psychological emotional attachment many have of their loved amps.
    Few groups are more gear-conservative than guitarists, the kemper is not the physical amp it profiled.
    The real amps are also the source for profile creation, so many will not sell their amp collection since then they can't make more profiles, with new mics, cabs etc. Why do some keep their old cars when new ones are available?


    The kemper has proven itself as a live rig since the beginning and hundreds of major bands use it.
    I and others have profiled amps getting so close that we couldn't tell difference in feel or sound in blind tests, and also had profiles that had smaller differences, but still sounded great.


    The guy in these videos compares his new kemper with his amps using his guitar cab.
    The profiles he's using are not even profiles of his own amps, just profiles made by others that have the same amp model as he does.
    He use the kemper power amp and bypasses the cab section in the kemper, so it's not even a DI, merged profile used.
    Despite all that I think the results are good, but to get best results I suggest always profile your own amps.


    Kemper vs Dr Z - M Britt Profile

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    First Hour with a Kemper Amp - Comparing Mesa Profile vs Real Mesa Dual

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    bring your own monitor :) that's all, it works and sounds fine but 3/4 of all gigs where i haven't brought my own monitor sucked extremely ...
    it sounded ultra bad on the stage monitors they had at these venues ...
    i don't know with tube amps everybody gets a great cab and this is also a point with the kemper, just because it simulates a cab doesn't mean that the so calles FRFR do not color the sound ...


    so yeah just do youself a favour and get a consisten sound on stage by bringing your ohn monitor...


    honestly 3 times last year my monitors sounded so bad i had a hard time playign on stage couse every note hurt just because the monitors that the venue had were so bad

    I mentioned numerous times a very specific problem. Strange behaviour at medium/high gain, at high (gigging or rehearsal, not high appartment volumes) volumes with real cabs, with every profile, merged studio or DI (tried marshalls, boogies, friedmans, EVH, peaveys, bogners etc) . Tried with different guitars, poweramps and cabs, even with different Kempers (a friend's powered Kemper) so the problem is clearly from Kemper preamp section and not from the other parts of the chain. Nobody said that kemper is not good for gigging. I said (and i still belive) that under these very specific circumstances there is a serious flaw, the unnaturally exessive pick attack can't be reduced (tried every possibe parameter) and notes thin out at high strings. This happens with every profile (tried more than a hundred from almost all popular vendors), and this DOES NOT happen with tube amps. Not even one, and I've played many of them, through the same cabs I did with Kemper.


    I even have given links from many other people that have that exact problem under these same circumstances.


    I have seen nowhere any great professional guitar player with great tone, that uses kemper live (not at home) with a real cab and MIKES the cab. Most players send master out to FOH, most players prefer FRFR solutions, and most of the ones that use real cabs do not mic the cab but use it only for monitoring their sound.


    I 'd be really happy to see links of some great professionals that get great tones live and use the Kemper with MIKED cabs, to ask for their advice. I'd also be really happy if I am wrong, but I've tried all possible combinations of settings and the problem is undeniably real, and thankfully I am not the only one that has it.


    And as I said again, I love my Kemper and I can get great tones easily through studio monitors or frfr cabs. I love being able to listen directly to the tone I'm recording. I love the convenience it gives me, but I want to give an honest and detailed opinion and not to be a fanboy here. I believe that only by being honest we can help each other and (who knows??) maybe helping Kemper Gmbh to improve an already great product, if they are still open to suggestions.

    I could not have said it better myself…
    I love my KPA for gigging, it simply cannot be beat when using XLR straight out to the PA. My tone is consistent, I get many compliments and at least once or twice, every gig, guitar players come up and look at what I’m playing through and they just start to laugh at themselves, they cannot believe that this computerized box sounds so good…
    They always say the same thing, ‘is that what you were playing through all night? Nothing else just that’? … And I smile and say, ‘Yep, that’s it’…


    But, Through a 4×12 guitar cabinet, it is not quite there yet…
    It does not react or feel or sound 100% like a real tube amplifier.
    It’s an incredible machine, but nothing in this world is 100% perfect…


    Happy Kemper, thank you so much for those two videos! The second one is exactly what I’m talking about when he mentions two or three times about the real amplifier being “bigger and fuller”… this says it all.
    It is just something very special that cannot be replicated (no matter how EQ is tweaked) through a 4×12 cabinet with the KPA…

    I am with you Keith,


    The kpa sounds great and so many guys have big eyes when they hear the sound and ask what ht heck is this green monster. I love the sounds too but I tried hours and hours to get the smack which John Petrucci gets in this vid ( have a look at 3:30 and 7:40 and I think everyone can hear what I mean and there is only the 1x12 a little later they switch to the 4x12....). This sound is absolutly killer in the room I think but I only can reach prox. 80% with the kpa and I have a bunch of profiles of this amp ( Guido, Cili and so on). No profile comes in the ballpark of this punch because I think too what the guy in the second vid above said: The kemper has another bass......Believe me, I tried every trick to reach this sound ( eq in front, eq behind, cabs, compressor, amp compressor, every amp parameter.....) I got cool sounds but not 1:1 the vid sound or the power behind ( what I hear so far). But I am happy whit the sounds I got. Enough for everything.


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    Cheers Frank

    Quote from JimmyK

    I have seen nowhere any great professional guitar player with great tone, that uses kemper live (not at home) with a real cab and MIKES the cab.

    Quote from JimmyK

    I 'd be really happy to see links of some great professionals that get great tones live and use the Kemper with MIKED cabs, to ask for their advice.


    Honestly,


    why would anybody want to do that?



    Have a nice sunday:)

    My guess is that it is habit.


    I had a VHT 4x12 slant top, and a 2x12 Fat bottom cab. Neither of these sounded good with standard profiles to my ear; however, if profiled against my VHT Ultralead, and then played through FRFR's, it did a great job.


    Having a monitor on stage so you can get the feedback of the air on the strings is critical for many lead players (maybe not so much for rhythm though). I personally use IEM's for my monitoring, so any monitor I have on stage is strictly for getting guitar action, not for my hearing pleasure.


    I have done MANY head to head comparisons of my rig, to others tube amp rigs. There has been no rig that performed as well as my KPA and a DSR112 did, and when stepping up to my full PA (dsr112's over PRX618XLF) it was even more pronounced.


    For live use (the topic of this thread), nothing even comes close IMO. I place my rack beside the mixer, plug in the 2 XLR outputs to the mixer, plug in power, run my one cable to my foot controller in front of my mic stand, and BOOM. I am done. Same great tone on every song, every night at exactly the right volume.


    Without a monitor (I generally only play rhythm), I can carry 2 guitars, and my entire KPA rig in a single trip.


    To me, that is worth quite a bit over my old tube amp setup, and as nice as my VHT was, the clean channel was nothing to write home about ..... and the KPA does a Fender Blackface that will bring tears to your eyes.

    It's like asking "why would anybody gig with a tube amp miked?". "Because he can" is the answer. Or "because he wants to". Besides that, I can think many reasons. Small venues, air moving, feel, two guitar players and the other one has a tube amp, sound guys that are used to the classic way of dialing with guitar tone, giving the soundman a sound from a real cab etc etc...If you had the perfect tone and response through your real cab, why spending hours and hours to find a "cab" that sounds close to the real one and not just mike it, if you know how to mike it?


    But my point is that guys probably don't use Kemper that way, because it doesn't sound like the real deal with a real cab under the specific circumstances I have mentioned earlier. If it did, why losing all the feel and response of the real amp behind you? Everybody would place a 57 in front of the cab and ready to go. There is a reason that people avoid to do that. For me, the response of the amp is very important, almost as important as the tone. In fact, the response IS the tone. Don't get me wrong, don't trying to be a smartass here, I'm just another bedroom player nowdays that gigs occasionally just for fun, but used to be a pro a few years back. And I only need five great core tones to express myself, not a bunch of sounds with a hundred different cabs etc. So, if Kemper could do that, would be great news for me.

    Too many variables...That's what I see when it comes to getting that live tone right. Unless you do the band mix yourself, or work with the same sound company, somehow you have to be flexible enough to "fit in". But introducing real cabinets back into the equation sounds like a bad idea to me. You're filtering a filtered tone. I can't see that working. FRFR is the way to go, and that will only be as good as the FRFR monitor solution you choose. As far as how loud you cranked the monitors when you dialed in your sound, that matters. Hopefully folks know to "crank it" every once in a while to verify the bass is not too much.


    And I agree that the best option is your own personal monitor solution that replicates your reference monitors. Not an easy task to find that quality in a stage setup. I tried ear monitors once and ended up pulling them because they made me feel disconnected from the band...and the live sound that I interact with. I still believe that if the "core tone" is done right, simple bass/mid/treble adjustments can get you sitting in the mix just fine. But if your guitar tone is not translating to nearly every type of stereo, TV, computer speakers of whatever, then the core tone is off and never going to work in any live situation. Then you need to focus on getting that balance right before you can go forward with a live situation.

    Phil 8)

    Quote from PHILBERT

    Too many variables...That's what I see when it comes to getting that live tone right. Unless you do the band mix yourself, or work with the same sound company, somehow you have to be flexible enough to "fit in". But introducing real cabinets back into the equation sounds like a bad idea to me. You're filtering a filtered tone. I can't see that working. FRFR is the way to go, and that will only be as good as the FRFR monitor solution you choose. As far as how loud you cranked the monitors when you dialed in your sound, that matters. Hopefully folks know to "crank it" every once in a while to verify the bass is not too much.


    And I agree that the best option is your own personal monitor solution that replicates your reference monitors. Not an easy task to find that quality in a stage setup. I tried ear monitors once and ended up pulling them because they made me feel disconnected from the band...and the live sound that I interact with. I still believe that if the "core tone" is done right, simple bass/mid/treble adjustments can get you sitting in the mix just fine. But if your guitar tone is not translating to nearly every type of stereo, TV, computer speakers of whatever, then the core tone is off and never going to work in any live situation. Then you need to focus on getting that balance right before you can go forward with a live situation.

    With all due respect, I don't agree. Why "filtering a filtered tone"? If you send a preamp+poweramp signal with the cab sim off to a real cab, you don't have any such problem. Besides that, either you send a miked signal or a direct with cab sim, the sound engineer can process the sound the way we wants, and change/process it as much as he wants. And coloration will always exist, even if you use the best FRFR, which will depend on your volume, the place you're gigging, the FOH speakers which will be different than your monitors etc. If you are not in the crowd, there is no way to know what people are hearing from your tone.


    There are a bunch of guys out there like me, who got a Kemper (apart from the studio convenience) not for having a million different sounds on stage but to get an all-in-one solution in a five kilos box, to use with our real cabs when gigging. If that worked fine, I wouldn't have to carry a twenty kilos head, an effects rack or 15 pedals and the cab, but with a powered Kemper, a two way switch and a small 1x12 I would be just fine. So I would have (much) less weight to carry, less connections and cables (with less signal loss of course) with the same tone and the same feel/response. If the tone and the response was there, I would prefer to mike it than send from master output.


    That's why I wonder why people dont use it with miked cabs, but everyone seems to prefer to send to FOH from master output, which means they are sending something different from what they feel from their monitor. If Kemper is not meant to be used that way (I see many people here saying this) , the ideal thing would be people to know it.

    Quote from JimmyK

    f That's why I wonder why people dont use it with miked cabs, but everyone seems to prefer to send to FOH from master output, which means they are sending something different from what they feel from their monitor. If Kemper is not meant to be used that way (I see many people here saying this) , the ideal thing would be people to know it.

    Amen brother Jimmy ;)


    If you can get good tone from going direct in, it is a much simpler and more foolproof way to consistently get a good mix IME.


    The basic idea of the KPA (capturing the response of the entire system .... amp, speaker, and mic) really lends itself to sounding good through a FRFR speaker which replays the sound with as little color as possible.


    Guitar cabs REALLY color tone. Try playing a good MP3 through one some time ;)


    For a live rig, I can't think of a better rig than the KPA. You are so right. Small, light, with a foot controller that is also presents a very small stage footprint. Stage space is very important to those of us that play different bars. Some places, space is right down scarce. My back also loves me for owning a KPA. While I think that VHT (Now Fryette) makes one of the best sounding cabs you can buy, the darned things are as heavy as a horse!